The power of nice

Nice is the "toughest word" you’ll ever hear, argue Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, authors of the US bestseller, The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness.

They contend that rather than being a doormat, nice means moving forwards with the "clear-eyed confidence" that comes from knowing that being nice and putting other people’s needs on the same level as your own "will get you everything you want".

They claim to have built their company, Kaplan Thaler Group, into a US advertising industry powerhouse in less than a decade and that this growth is the result of "smiles and compliments" rather than fear and intimidation.

So does nice have a power all of its own that more of the UK’s business leaders and managers need to recognise and exploit? Jessica Pryce-Jones, CEO of human asset management consultancy iOpener, and author of Happiness at Work: Maximising Your Psychological Capital for Success, has no doubt that the way to foster great performance, productivity and potential is by "being nice". She poses the following question: "Think about the nastiest person you’ve worked for and how much time you spent plotting revenge rather than working hard for them. Then think of the nicest and how much you went out of your way to help them."

Not everyone agrees that nice is a new passport to success in the world of work. Adrian Furnham, professor of psychology at University College London, says niceness is a personality dimension associated with agreeableness and showing empathy with other people. In the business world, he firmly believes nice guys generally come second. "People who are too caring and sharing tend not to confront negative performance," he says. "They are unable to make tough decisions about people if necessary and are therefore not as successful as they could be. It’s been argued that women score higher on agreeableness than men, and that is why fewer women are found at the top in business."

"Being nice is enormously powerful, but if that’s the only way you are perceived then it is enormously dangerous," he says. "You have to see both sides of the equation. Being nice doesn’t mean not being strict and not expecting to form clear views about expectations and goals. Being nice doesn’t rule out being pretty tough on what you have agreed on performance. The problem is when people mix having a nice easy-going relationship with actual performance expectations, and that’s where it gets tricky."

He says comparisons with international managers suggest that UK leaders do better than their European counterparts in terms of ensuring positive relationships with teams. They also tend to operate in more relaxed and less formal workplaces.

"In most other European countries it would be rare for people to call their manager by their first name, but in the UK it’s the other way round," he says. "UK managers have reduced the degree of distance between themselves and their people. This helps build levels of engagement and motivation, but it can have a negative effect when it comes to dealing with under-performance as you can’t manage friends."

To be fair to UK bosses, they may also be reacting to changes in the way employees expect to be treated. Research carried out by ILM and Ashridge Business School, which examined the attitudes and expectations of Generation Y graduates and their managers, found that the ideal manager for more than half (56%) of graduates is a coach or mentor, while almost a quarter (21%) wanted their boss to be a friend to them.

Such expectations are a bad fit for the ‘command and control’ style of leadership that prevailed for so long. Pryce-Jones says this approach is now redundant if we want to be a knowledge and service economy. "The only way to succeed at building those types of economies is to be nice," she says. "Let’s face it, you wouldn’t even want to buy a burger from someone who has a bad attitude. We like to feel that sense of connectedness because it makes us want to take the next step with a person."

While there is disagreement over whether being nice is good or bad for business, there is a consensus that its biggest potential pitfall is that it may prevent people from dealing with underperformance, which could also demotivate good performers. "If you speak to people who are frustrated with their boss, they often say it’s because they let others get away with stuff," says Furnham. "And if they see others getting away with it, they then try to themselves because of a sense of equity. Then you get regression to the mean and poor performance all round. You could hardly get a worse situation."

Furnham says being emotionally intelligent does not mean being warm and empathetic to poor performance. It’s about managing your own and your staff’s emotions appropriately. "That’s the job of management," he says. "To help people perform better by making sure they get feedback and have clear targets, not letting them off the hook the whole time because you feel sorry for them."

The way to deal with poor performance if you aren’t comfortable doing so is to learn relevant pre-prepared scripts and follow your company’s HR rules and regulations, says Furnham. "Use the processes to help you."

Pryce-Jones says it is unkind not to point out poor performance, likening it to not telling someone they have spinach in their teeth. However, she emphasises that the important thing is how you approach the criticism. "Feedback that affects self-esteem won’t be paid attention to by the team member, but feedback calculated to improve the task they do will be listened to," she says. "After all, none of us turn up at work to be a failure. Some people forget that we all want to do well."

Leaders and managers who want to up their ‘nice’ credentials should make sure they listen to their teams and observe what is going on around them, says Pryce-Jones. "And one of the easiest ways of annoying people is by interrupting them. If you remember things that matter to people, they will like you."

You should also admit you are wrong when it is appropriate to do so. Vogel says some bosses see this as a mark of weakness, but he believes it is really one of strength, courage and openness, and it creates a window of opportunity to redefine and repair a relationship.

But he stresses the importance of striking a balance between nice and critical: "Nice managers must learn to show their strict performance-oriented side, and I know quite a few who find this a big ask. They don’t like giving difficult messages to teams or individuals, so they need to learn that only being is not enough."